Most Popular Books by Ian Watson

Eugenio Barba is one of Europe''s leading theatre directors, at the forefront of experimental and group theatre for more than twenty years. Ian Watson provides the most comprehensive and systematic study of Barba''s work, including his training methods, dramaturgy, productions and theories, as well as his work at the International School of Theatre Anthropology.

Originally published in 1983. Song has always been a natural way to record everyday experiences – an expression of celebration, commiseration, complaint and protest. This innovative book is a study of popular and working-class song combining several approaches to the subject. It is a history of working-class song in Britain which concentrates not simply on the songs and the singers but attempts to locate such song in its cultural context and apply principles of literary criticism to this essentially oral medium. It triggered controversy: some critics castigated its Marxist approach, others enthused that ‘such unabashed partisanship amply reveals the outstanding characteristic of Watson''s book’. The author discusses the way in which the popular song, from Victorian times onwards, has been forced by the entertainment industry out of its roots in popular culture, to become a blander form of art with minimal critical potential. The book ends by considering the possibilities for a continued flourishing of a genuine popular song culture in an electronic age. It has become a standard title in bibliographies and curricula. Much has changed since 1983, not least in music; but this then innovative book still has a lot to say about popular song in its social and historical context.

Psychiatrist John Cunningham is secretly also "Jack Cannon", author of popular horror novels. Under hypnotic regression, John''s patient Tony reveals a bizarre and horrifying tale of a "past life" lived on Tyneside in the 1950s, involving two schoolboys and a weird creature with paranormal powers lurking in caves beneath Tynemouth Castle. As John regresses Tony through earlier lives as far back as the 14th century it begins to seem that the local legend, captured in folksong, of a malevolent Lambton Worm may have had a basis in fact: that it was, in fact, the salamander of alchemical belief, summoned by an alchemist known as Raymond Lully, and possibly still locked below Tynemouth Castle And while John Cunningham is exploring Tony''s multiple personalities, he begins to experience personality problems of his own, as Jack Cannon beings to assert his own individuality.

Alex Winter and Deborah Tate arrive by hovercraft at the city of Babylon, lying on the river Euphrates in the Arizona desert. He is a sociology drop-out from the University of Oregon at Eugene who wants to become a Babylonian. She has a much stranger ambition. Their minds are babbling in the Greek that has been pumped into them via computer interface at the University of Heuristics. To them, English has yet to be invented and the young king Alexander lies dying in his palace. The city is dominated by the tower of Babel, its spiral roadway curling up towards the heavens and wide enough for several donkey carts. And women sit outside the Temple of Ishtar, waiting for some stranger to drop a coin in their laps. The prospect seems to fascinate Deborah. She wants to become one of the Whores of Babylon.

In 1890 the Russian author Chekhov undertook an historic journey across Siberia to the convict island of Sakhalin. A hundred years later, in an isolated artist''s retreat, a Soviet film unit prepares to commemorate his journey by using a technique that will cause their chosen actor to not only play the role of the playwright, but to believe that he is Chekhov. But the situations Mikhail acts out diverge wildly from known biographical facts when Chekhov hears of an explosion in the Tunguska region of Siberia. Yet the real Tunguska explosion occurred in 1908 - so how could Chekhov have possible heard of it in 1890?

The Very Slow Time Machine arrives on earth in 1985. Its sole inhabitant is old and mad. Soon it becomes apparent that for him, time is going slowly backward. With every day, he is getting younger and saner. The world, and its whole concept of time, science and philosophy, must wait for him to speak. But while the world waits, it changes...

Meet Qua, the quantum computer with the immense power capabilities that tunes into pathways in parallel universes to operate at lightning speed. But with such power comes the threat of catastrophe, and as government agents, cult disciples, and computer criminals learn what this computer is capable of, Cambridge researcher Clare Conway makes every attempt to safeguard herself and society from the realities she discovers about Qua. For all of the power this computer offers, it threatens to spark a civil war in America, a danger unlike any other that history has ever known.

When a young Russian boy disappears from a top-secret Soviet research establishment and turns up in Tokyo, he presents a major problem for the American security officials. For the boy appears to be part of a sophisticated experiment and to have the mind of a supposedly dead astronaut imperfectly imprinted on his own. If the boy is to be believed, then the experiment has been extended to a whale. In Mexico, ground-breaking research by Nobel Prize winner Paul Hammond has shown that what we perceive as the Universe is no more than the ghost of the real thing. Signals received by his radio telescope have shown him that the Universe God created no longer exists. Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1977

In another world, somewhere in space and time, two countries - Bellogard and Chorny - are locked in perpetual war, conducted by magic. Each of the main members of the two countries'' courts - king, queen, prince, bishop, knight and squire - has their own form of magic, and special ways of moving magically. A war may continue for centuries, until one side succeeds in killing the other side''s king, at which point the whole world vanishes, only to reappear and have the cycle begin again. . . Pedino is a young Bellogardian who becomes the queen''s squire and, as part of his training, is sent into a seedier part of the city to uncover a Chornian spy. During his adventures he meets and falls in love with a whore, Sara, who turns out to be a Chornian bishop''s squire. Pedino succeeds in killing the other Chornian bishop - a remarkable achievement for a mere squire; but in the manoeuvres which follow Chorny proves to have outwitted its rival, and Pedino''s whole world is threatened with extinction. There have been many stories modelled on chess games, but none so ingenious and enjoyable as Ian Watson''s latest novel. And, as one would expect from Watson, the story of Bellogard and Chorny is only the beginning. When Pedino and Sara manage to escape the destruction of their universe, they find themselves in a series of even more bizarre worlds operating under still stranger rules, as they seek to discover the purpose of their existence, and the meaning of their universe. Queenmagic, Kingmagic is Ian Watson in sparkling, exuberant form.

A collection of science-fiction short stories by the author of "Lucky''s Harvest". They feature dozens of characters, a new way of travelling between the stars, a strange planet, magical powers, bravura set-pieces, and manoeuvres of narrative.

The computer unlike other inventions is universal; you can use a computer for many tasks: writing, composing music, designing buildings, creating movies, inhabiting virtual worlds, communicating... This popular science history isn''t just about technology but introduces the pioneers: Babbage, Turing, Apple''s Wozniak and Jobs, Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Zuckerberg. This story is about people and the changes computers have caused. In the future ubiquitous computing, AI, quantum and molecular computing could even make us immortal. The computer has been a radical invention. In less than a single human life computers are transforming economies and societies like no human invention before.

Trapped by the evil Edrick in a locked room, Yaleen is cold-bloodedly murdered. But it is not the end of Yaleen''s story, for she is given a second life - a reincarnation on Earth as a ''cherub''. Soon she encounters Godmind, the megalomaniac artificial deity which controls life on Earth - and maintains a brutal labour colony on the Moon for any who dare to rebel. Bit by bit, Yaleen comes to understand the horrifying project of the Godmind...

British Science Fiction award winner Ian Watson graces us here with a brilliant new collection of short stories and essays. Though he dazzles the reader with his footwork in the kaleidoscope intensity of his vision, each piece is plainly the work of a master craftsman. Whether he is dealing with a future culture where whales control us ("The Culling") or taking a hilarious poke at the matter of government funding ("The President''s Not for Turning"), his concepts are clear and undeniably logical. True to the highest ideal of science fiction, Watson carries present tendencies of our society to possible conclusions in "Roof Gardens under Saturn," and points a warning finger at the consequences of alienation from the environment. In an innovative style which borders on the experimental, Watson explores in "The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle" the horrors of fascism. Ian Watson''s writing stays with us. He entertains and he makes us think. If in some future and better world politicians were to take advice form writers, Watson should be one of them.

Charles Spark is an expert on body language, a bestselling author and a consultant (or walking lie detector) much in demand with industry and government. So when the aliens arrive, who better to join the team that will attempt to understand them? But even though these insectoid aliens - the "Flies" - in their pyramid-ship speak both English and Russian, they seem unreadable. "We have come to your planet to remember it," they say and at first they seem indeed to be a bizarre group of intergalactic tourists. When human beings start to interfere, things begin disappearing. The Dome of St Peter''s in Rome is the first to go, followed by downtown Prague, old Mombasa, Münich, the heart of New Orleans. In an effort to understand what has happened, Spark, and a strange group of pilgrims, embark on a bizarre journey to Mars - where the city of Münich has reappeared in a canyon. And where time, and memory, have become manifest.

Negotiating Cultures is a collection of essays and interviews that examines the role of cultural fusion, negotiation, and conflict in Eugenio Barba''s creative work, research, and theories about theatrical performance. Barba, one of Europe''s leading theatre artists, researchers, and theorists, has been at the cutting edge of the contemporary preoccupation with what Homi Bhabha calls the borders between cultures.

The wholesale capture and distribution of knowledge over the last thirty years has created an unprecedented need for organizations to manage their knowledge assets. Knowledge Management (KM) addresses this need by helping an organization to leverage its information resources and knowledge assets by "remembering" and applying its experience. KM involves the acquisition, storage, retrieval, application, generation, and review of the knowledge assets of an organization in a controlled way. Today, organizations are applying KM throughout their systems, from information management to marketing to human resources. Applying Knowledge Management: Techniques for Building Corporate Memories examines why case-based reasoning (CBR) is so well suited for KM. CBR can be used to adapt solutions originally designed to solve problems in the past, to address new problems faced by the organization. This book clearly demonstrates how CBR can be successfully applied to KM problems by presenting several in-depth case-studies. Ian Watson, a well-known researcher in case-based reasoning and author of the introductory book, Applying CBR: Techniques for Enterprise Systems has written this book specifically for IT managers and knowledge management system developers.* Provides 7 real-world applications of knowledge management systems that use case-based reasoning techniques.* Presents the technical information needed to implement a knowledge management system.* Offers insights into the development of commercial KM CBR applications* Includes information on CBR software vendors, CBR consultants and value added resellers

The megalomaniac Godmind is still planning to use all the minds in creation to make a vast ''lens'', and if necessary it will burn out all life in the process. Back beside the river and literally born again, Yaleen represents to the guild of riverwomen the perfect proof of salvation, of life after death. In fact, she is desperately searching for a way to save the whole universe from imminent destruction.

The regions that have survived the holocaust in Watson''s new novel have largely transformed themselves from prewar violence into a peaceful utopia, without either conflict or art. In place of belief in a religious afterlife, the old and ailing accept euthanasia at Houses of Death where priestlike guides counsel them. One of these guides is Jim Todhunter, who pursues research into the nature of death despite official censure. When he is assigned to guide that rarity in the new world - a murderer - he finds a natural ally in the obsessive Nathan Weinberger, himself an ex-guide. As usual with Watson, the initial impression of a green and pleasant land is revealed to be only one facet of a more complex and disturbing reality.